b500 magazine
DAVID SIMON The Art Market
David Simon specialises in Contemporary and Modern British artists. He established the gallery in Somerset in 2006, after managing a gallery in Mayfair. The gallery, in Castle Cary, has a programme of monthly curated exhibitions, highlighting both emerging and established artists including paintings, ceramics and bronze sculpture.
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his spring the gallery has chosen to fill its programme with plenty of variety, with a double exhibition running throughout March and April across its two showrooms in Castle Cary, Somerset. George Dannatt (1915 - 2009): Landscape Observations, is a collection of more than fifty paintings by this outstanding and inspirational figure in the story of the St Ives School of Art. George Dannatt represented a rare breed of cultural polymath: music critic, practising artist, connoisseur, and collector of modern art. His career as an artist spanned more than five decades. The paintings in this exhibition are a retrospective selection dating from 1961-2007 rooted in his observation of the landscape of the southwest of England. During his lifetime Dannatt had his work exhibited in London, Switzerland, Germany, as well as across the south of England.
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At first glance his paintings, often on a small scale, seem abstract in the full sense of the word; disconnected from our world; studies of pattern through geometry, precise line and a fascination with contrasting surface textures. Dannatt’s work is both absorbing and intellectual and invites the viewer to spend time with it. In many of the works in this collection, looking beyond the modernist forms, ideas of horizon, coast, sky and land emerge and, so, maintain the interest of the eye and imagination and ultimately keeps you coming back for more.
through half-closed eyes” pinpointing a small area at the top of the painting, and then obscuring the intervening landscape to contribute to the feeling of distance.
The painting “White Hill to Fleet”, 2005 is an excellent example of George Dannatt’s thought process and practice. This work is based on a very distant view of a stretch of the Fleet and Chesil Bank as George described it: “a scene which one might produce by observing a long distance
David Simon Contemporary is delighted and privileged to be working with the George Dannatt Trust. We represent a broad overview of the work of George Dannatt a decade after his death. This collection of his work from the 1960’s through five decades, carefully selected by David Simon, charts his exploration of geometry, form and space and relating hard abstraction to references of landscape. Paintings by this artist can be found in the permanent collections of Pallant House Gallery, Chichester, Bournemouth University, Southampton City Art Gallery, and Royal Air Force, as well as other important public collections.
JOHN PIPER (1903 - 1992) Smailholm Tower, 1975 gouache on paper 39.4 x 58.4cm
GEORGE DANNATT (1915 - 2009) A Colour Composition - Dominant Red, 1995 oil on black paper 22.8 x 28.8cm
